Conventionally, tamales are made from corn, also known as maize. One known method of preparing tamale rolls involves mixing corn masa (corn masa is made by soaking and cooking corn in water with lye treatment, and then grinding to a paste), lard, water or broth, and spices into a corn meal tamale dough which is placed on a corn husk wrapped around a filling (such as meat or cheese filling) and steamed to make tamale roll with filling, the tamale.
Instead of preparing corn masa, another conventional method used to prepare tamale rolls involves the use of Masa Harina flour, an alkaline treated corn flour with desirable flavor and dough consistency, which is mixed with lard, salt, baking powder, water or broth and spices to form the tamale dough which is placed on a corn husk wrapped around a filling (such as meat or cheese filling) and steamed to make tamale.
In both cases, the steamed tamale corn meal dough is a soft mass and needs a "wrapper" to hold it (the "wrapper" may be, for instance, corn husks, banana leaves or corn leaves). There are two disadvantages of the conventional tamale roll:
(i) after it is made, it has no strength, is breaks easily on bending or folding, and PA1 (ii) it has to be kept frozen since it has a moisture content of 48-55% and water activity of 0.97-0.98 which can be kept at refrigerated temperature only for a very short period of time.